The Twelfth Street Food Pantry's is a non-profit faith based organization that grew out of the Twelfth Street Missionary Baptist Church. The pantry launched in 2002 with the mission to provide all needy residents of the neighboring community with enough groceries to prepare at least three nutritious meals for a family of four per the bi-weekly distribution. These families do not have the income to buy the groceries for nutritional meals and without the Food Pantry, nutritional meals would not be available to them. The pantry does not provide your normal grocery bag of food but Glad kitchen tall bags full of food. The bags have milk, eggs, fresh vegetables, bread, cereal, meat, juices, chips, cookies, and more. The monies we have, we put toward the purchase of the foods from local food banks for distribution. The pantry is servicing between 350-400 households per the bi-weekly distribution period. People walk for miles, ride bikes in the rain, stand in the cold – just to get these bags of food.

Unfortunately the roof of the pantry is in disrepair. When it rains, between 30-35 volunteers are hampered in their ability to store, pack and distribute the food bags due to the constant bailing of buckets to keep the water from reaching areas where the food is stored and being packaged. There is a major concern that if the leak becomes worse, we may have to shut down the pantry.

This project funds the repair of the roof at the pantry so that food distribution can continue for those in need.

The pantry is servicing between 350-400 households per the bi-weekly distribution period.
The majority of our client population is from the following zip codes: 48238, 48203, 48227, 48221, 48235, 48206
Of these, 28% are 0-17, 57% are 18-64 and 15% are 65+.

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Direct Impact of Your Project

The 30 - 35 volunteers are required to work harder to assure the safety of the work environment and to protect the food from any affects of the leakage. The safety of the volunteers and the food to be distributed are all managed by the volunteers themselves. This is added work and this is additional time taken from the volunteer’s day. Our volunteers do not get pay. We are very grateful to our volunteers. What ever the situation, they step up to the job. But in reality, this is unfair to them. Please help us take this burden off of them.

Extended Impact on Your Partner Community

If the Pantry is unable to get the funds to repair the roof, the eventual outcome is the closure of the Pantry. In 2011, 8,292 bags of food were provided to the needy. This number represents 346 households and 1384 individuals biweekly (based on the assumption we are servicing the same families through the year and a household of 4).